


Just A Pirouette

by inlovewithnight



Category: Bandom, Fall Out Boy
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-17
Updated: 2011-04-17
Packaged: 2017-10-18 05:02:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/185319
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inlovewithnight/pseuds/inlovewithnight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A "Normal Again" AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Just A Pirouette

The interviewer is a tiny, perky guy with an aggressive smile, which makes him completely typical. He introduced himself when they arrived, only like ten minutes ago, but Pete already can't remember it. It's slipped away in the also-typical haze of exhaustion and chaos and dozens of names flying past him at once.

"So," says Smiley Guy, and Pete blinks, distracted by how the studio lights reflect off those perfect teeth. "You're going on an extended hiatus..."

Pete doesn't have to turn his head to know that Patrick's shoulders just went tight. Jesus. So sick of this question.

Pete can give his answer more or less on autopilot now, his eyes wandering from Smiley to the floor to the ceiling. Need to decompress, been doing this for so long, catching their breath, blah blah blah.

Whatever he says, it must be close enough to what he's said before, because Smiley just nods and moves on to the next question. Patrick takes that one, and Pete's attention drifts again. There's a painting on the wall, a landscape of somewhere sunny and bright, maybe Italy. He should go somewhere like that on the hiatus, maybe. Take a vacation. There's nothing to keep him in the States; he can work from anywhere with Internet. Maybe what he needs is sunlight and wine and...Italians.

"So, Pete," Smiley says, and he forces himself to focus back in. Patrick's hand bumps his knee, light and gentle and totally familiar after this long. He glances sideways at Patrick and swings his knee out to bump him back. Stupid little interview signals they made up years ago. _Pay attention, doofus_ , says Patrick in code, and _I am, I am_ , Pete says back. Doesn't even miss Smiley's question, though he kind of wishes he had.

"It's been a year since your highly publicized divorce, after just three months of marriage..." Pete can answer this one on autopilot as well, _no hard feelings_ and _wish her only the best_ and _we were really young_ and it's all true, it's all totally true, and nobody will believe a word of it because these interviews are designed for professional liars. It all sounds nice and smooth, anyway, coming out clean from behind the lump in his stomach that doesn't ache as much anymore, thank God.

Patrick touches his knee again, two fingers this time, which means _doing good_ or _keep cool_ or _almost done_ , a weird mix of the three, and Pete just nods. He knows. He's mellow now. Professional. All grown up. He can roll with any interview.

On and on, same old same old, and then just when Pete's about to fall asleep, Smiley throws a curveball. "Going on hiatus must be an opportunity to reflect," he says, showing even more teeth. "Do you ever think about what your life would be like without Fall Out Boy? Where you would be today, what you'd be doing instead?"

Pete blinks. That question is...weird as hell. It's not like they've never been asked it before, but in the context of this interview, this tour, this day, it hits like a slap. Smiley is grinning like he's fucking brilliant, but Pete just feels like he _missed_ something.

Patrick laughs and Pete turns to look at him, glad for the distraction from the unease that's twisting up his stomach for no easily definable reason. "Well, sure. I mean, it crosses my mind. I think everybody does the what-if thing sometimes, you know? Change one thing and see how it all ends up different."

"Better?" Smiley asks, and Patrick laughs again, rubbing at his eyebrow.

"Dude, I'm in a rock band, how could things be better?" Pete's next breath comes easier, even though, well, duh, what else would Patrick say? "But different, yeah. I think about things being different."

Smiley looks at Pete, pen twitching over his notepad. Pete sinks his teeth into his tongue for a moment before he answers. "I try not to."  
**  
His hotel room is fancy as hell but there's something wrong with the climate control; it veers from too hot to too cold in a weird hour-long cycle. He could call down to the desk and complain, but he's not feeling it, it would just be a pain in the ass and he can make do.

He ends up sitting on the bed in his boxers, the blankets wound around his lap in layers that are easy to kick off and pull back on. His laptop sits next to him, providing access to an Internet that is stubbornly refusing to be entertaining. Even his @ replies on Twitter aren't insulting enough to provide more than a moment of spite. Boring, boring. And there's nothing on TV.

He looks at the clock and tries to figure out the time difference between there and France. He could call Gabe, harass him a little, kill some time. But he can't make the math work--time zones all blur together after a while into a meaningless mess--and Cobra might be onstage or asleep and actually now that he thinks about it they might not be in France at all, anymore. Forget it.

He slips out of bed and goes down the hall to Patrick's room. Three knocks before the door opens; that's about average. It's never more than five, not even if they've had a fight. He doesn't abuse that privilege, doesn't go knocking just to get the last word. They've all grown up.

Patrick doesn't say anything, just opens the door and shuffles back to bed. Pete's not even sure Patrick's eyes are open all the way. Years of habit, what feels like a fucking lifetime.

Patrick gets back in bed and puts the pillow over his head. Pete lies down next to him and stares up at the ceiling. It's not any easier to fall asleep when he isn't alone, but it's less awful to be lying there awake. He can listen to Patrick breathe, wonder what he's doing in his dreams. It helps.

He wonders if Patrick is dreaming about Smiley's question, about that world where there was no band. He lifts the edge of the pillow and watches Patrick sleep, trying to tell by the way his eyes move beneath his lids. It doesn't really work, so his imagination steps in and does overtime. Patrick doing the normal high-school thing. Patrick going to college and getting a fucking Master's in...musicology, whatever. Patrick giving up music altogether and going into computer science. Patrick with a wife and little grumpy-faced babies, all wearing hats. Patrick up on stage singing his heart out with somebody else's band, somebody else's words.

Pete fucking hates smiley interviewers and their stupid questions and his own brain's inability to let anything go in the middle of the night.

He stays there for another half an hour and then goes back to his own room, walking on his toes down the hall for no real reason other than that he can pretend he's sneaking up on something, pretend there's anything waiting.

He restlessly punches refresh on his email and his Twitter--nothing and DeLeon getting poetic, respectively--then clicks over to his @ replies.

He's a loser, he's a douche, is the band breaking up for good, will they ever come to Dubai--what?--and then one that catches his eye.

 _@petewentz if you think knowing will make a difference http ://tinyurl.com/skmylb3_

Of course he clicks the link.

The page takes a minute to load, and he bites at his thumbnail, watching the waiting symbol spin around and around. If he thinks knowing _what_ will make a difference? God, the Internet is fucking weird.

The screen fills in and for a moment he sees dozens of faces, layered over top of each other, eyes wide and staring straight out at him. They're all grayscale and out of focus, and he barely has time to register that before suddenly the screen goes white, doesn't just go white but goes up in a _flash_ of white, bright enough that he jumps back and throws his hands over his eyes.

Fuck. His fucking laptop screen just fucking exploded, or burned out maybe. At any rate, how can clicking a link do that, what kind of virus could he have let in that fast that could--

"Good morning, Mr. Wentz." The voice is low and soothing and does not at all belong in his hotel room. "Time for your medication."

Pete opens his eyes, startled. He's not in his hotel room at all. Instead he's in a small, gray room with a table, a window, and an institutional-looking cot where he's sitting. The man in the doorway is wearing scrubs and holding a cup of pills.

"Oh," he says, eyebrows going up slightly. "You're with us today, I see. It's nice to see you."

Pete opens his mouth to ask what the fuck is going on, but just as he meets the man's eyes, the world goes white all over again.

And then he's back in his hotel room, laptop in a death grip in hands that are shaking.

"What the fuck was that?" he whispers, looking around the room. The dark, empty, swanky hotel room where he is alone. "What the _fuck_ was that?"  
**  
He gets down to the lobby late; the others look bored but don't say anything. They're all so far beyond used to this by now, to mentally shifting times back at random intervals because _someone_ is going to fail to be on time, guarantee it, flip a coin for who it is. Getting mad about it got old a long time ago.

Pete squeezes Andy's arm, fist-bumps Joe, and rests his forehead on Patrick's shoulder, trying to will the lingering uneasiness in his stomach to run out of his body through the contact, use Patrick as a bypass, and disappear into the floor.

"Hey," Patrick says, jerking his shoulder a little to make Pete's head bounce.

"Hey, dude."

"You get any sleep?"

Pete shrugs and steps back, shoving his hands in his pockets. "A little. Had a weird dream."

It wasn't a dream. He was wide awake. But it would suck to throw words like _hallucinating_ around this early in the day, and anyway, he isn't even sure where to start if he wanted to describe it.

Patrick is looking at him with mild, exasperated patience, and Pete shrugs again. "What?"

"Nothing, I just figured you were going to, you know, tell us about the dream, since you set it up and all."

"Oh." Joe and Andy are looking at him, too, expectantly, earbuds dangling from Andy's fingers and Joe pausing in his slow perusal of _Blunt_.

"It was dumb," Pete says finally. "Just weird. I don't know. Hey, is the car even here yet or do I have time to get coffee?"  
**  
They only have three shows left before the hiatus. All of them need to be good. Not that they don't always need to be good, but there's something extra, now, an edge to the awareness that people are paying them money to be entertained and it would be lovely if they could not fuck up. The balance of entitlement and narcissism between themselves and the fans has shifted a little and it makes stepping out on stage feel different for the first time in years.

Stepping on stage is also going to feel different because he had another fucking hallucination after sound check.

Thank God, he was in the bathroom at the time, alone. The world went white and then he was back in that room, sitting on the bed, and his _parents_ were there, talking to a woman in a lab coat.

"...new treatment," she said, smiling and patting his mom's hand. "We're very optimistic."

"You think this will get him out of the dream world," his dad said, his voice overly neutral, like he was making a point of not having hope. "Bring him back again."

The woman--the doctor, Pete guessed she must be--smiled more, then looked over and saw him watching her. "Yes," she said, "yes, Mr. Wentz, that's exactly what we think. Hello, Peter."

His parents both turned to look at him, he caught a glimpse of their eyes, and when he blinked himself out of the white flash he was lying on the bathroom floor, his head practically under the toilet.

"What the hell were you doing in there?" Joe asks when he stumbles back into the dressing room. "We were starting to worry you fell in."

Pete doesn't answer, just shakes his head and goes to Patrick. He sits down beside him, curling his body against Patrick's the best he can without jostling Patrick's arm. Patrick's eyes don't leave his laptop, but that's okay. Pete doesn't need his full attention, just needs _him_ , needs Patrick to be present and grounding him here in reality, in where he is.

"You okay?" Patrick murmurs, bobbing his head with whatever beat is coming through his headphones.

Pete nods against his shoulder, willing it to be true. He's fine. He's got an overactive imagination. One with a sick sense of humor, and timing.

"Gonna have a good show tonight." Patrick's voice is a roughly equal mix of statement, question, and order. Pete nods again.

"Whatever's making you weird, we'll talk about it after."

"I'm not weird."

"Well, we all know that's bullshit."

Somehow this is comforting. Maybe because it's completely normal. "Fuck you."

"Get off me. I'm busy."

Pete pulls away and takes his phone out, punching in a few restless texts before he goes to get dressed. Everything is normal, relentlessly so. Nothing has changed here, only inside his head, and if he ignores that hard enough maybe it will go away.  
**  
It's a good show, not a great show, and that pisses Pete off. They should all be great shows now. There's no time for average or decent. He just feels _off_ , can't find the sweet spot inside the energy of the crowd and the music, can't find that perfect balance where he isn't Pete anymore, he's just an open shell holding other people's brainwaves, part Joe and part Andy and part audience and all held together with Patrick's voice.

If he's being honest, that never happens more than like one show in ten, and he's usually pretty drunk when it does, but it's the third to last show and now apparently there's a chance he's going to be spending his hiatus going completely irredeemably batshit insane, so he had been _hoping_.

He gets changed and looks at himself in the mirror for a minute. Still the same. Always the same. Whatever changes, it's only under the surface. He can never decide if that's the stuff that matters most or least.

"Stop it," he tells himself, poking his reflection in the eye. "Just stop it. This shit is so three years ago."

"Pete?"

He jumps, jerking back from the mirror. "Dude. You scared me. Don't be sneaky."

Patrick gives him one of those looks, all patient and annoyed at once. That look is one of the things Pete uses to orient himself in the universe. When Patrick isn't around, he imagines it in hi-def.

"I don't sneak," Patrick says. "I've been calling your name for like five minutes."

"Oh." Fuck. Well, he didn't hallucinate but apparently he did zone out. He always zones out, though. Probably that's not a symptom of...whatever this is.

"Are you okay, man? Is something going on?"

"If I had a dollar for every time you've asked me that, P-Stump, I could start another label."

Patrick snorts. "What would you do with another one?"

"I don't know. Focus on, like, underage kazoo prodigies or something."

"That's kind of a niche market."

"I could make it happen."

"Sure." Patrick's look is shifting over into the one with real concern in it, and Pete wonders what he could do if he had a dollar for every time he made _that_ happen. Buy all of the kazoos in the world.

"I'm fine, dude. Just tired."

"Try actually sleeping tonight, maybe."

"I never thought of that. Thanks, man."

"Hey, any time. I'll even give you that one for free." Patrick reaches out and squeezes Pete's shoulder, and if this was an interview it would mean _I know that rope he or she just offered you is tempting, but please don't._ "You sure everything's cool?"

Patrick looks as tired as Pete feels. This is why they're taking a hiatus; they're all tired, they're tapped out. Pete can't help leaning into Patrick's hand, thinking about their signals and the way he's catalogued Patrick's looks, Patrick's endless patience in putting up with his bullshit since Patrick was _sixteen_.

Pete wears people out even more than tour would on its own. He's not going to put this on Patrick, too. Not now.

"I'm cool," he says, and tugs the brim of Patrick's hat down over his face. "Do we have a party tonight?"  
**  
The last two shows are also good but not great, failing at transcendence. At the last one, he thanks their fans for everything, for their love, for their lives, and he knows it sounds more final than it should but he's never been good at curbing his impulse toward the dramatic, and he gets worse at it when he's freaking the fuck out. Which he is doing as he stands on stage.

The flashes won't stop.

They're consistently happening twice a day, and it seems like they're more vivid, more real. The morning of the last show, he hallucinated an entire half-hour of group therapy, only flashing back to his bunk when the doctor and everyone else in the circle turned to look at him and he realized that it was his turn to speak.

He came back to himself soaked in a cold sweat, his heart pounding in his chest, his teeth sunk into the arm of his sweatshirt to keep from screaming.

The whole idea of going back to his empty condo in LA scares the shit out of him. He could still book a vacation, or go crash with a friend, or fuck, even go see his parents, but those all share the problem that, eventually, someone's going to notice that he keeps fucking passing out or something, lying there drooling on himself because his brain thinks it's inhabiting another body in a world where his life went differently.

It's not the kind of thing he can really explain to anybody.

They all ride together to the airport, check in together, get through security together, and then share awkward hugs before splitting up to find their respective gates. The hugs being awkward, that's new. Or maybe Pete's projecting things, creating awkwardness to stop himself from clinging to their necks and saying _Don't fucking leave me alone with my head, you guys don't go don't go don't go._

Awkward is definitely better than that.

Andy heads off one direction, Joe another, and Pete and Patrick linger for a minute, not quite looking at each other.

"I'll be back in LA in a week," Patrick says finally, "once I'm done with the family stuff. I'll call you."

"Dude, we're on hiatus. Vacation from each other."

Patrick gives him an odd look. "You know that's not actually what it means, right?"

Pete shrugs, digging his fingers into his palm in his pocket. "I'm just saying. You don't have to call me."

"Maybe I want to."

Pete bites the inside of his cheek to keep from screaming at Patrick not to fucking leave him to get on the plane alone. "Okay, well, maybe do what you want."

"I will, thanks." Patrick hugs him again, and this time it isn't awkward, and Pete does cling. Fuck. What are they doing, what is happening, _what is going on_?  
**  
He's so exhausted when he gets to the condo--just as empty and unsettling as predicted--that he takes a handful of the sleeping pills that qualify as "the good shit" and sleeps for a day and a half. Maybe as a punishment for that, when he does wake up he only makes it halfway to the bathroom before he gets hit by a flash.

He's alone in what's probably the rec room, he guesses, of whatever facility his brain is putting him in. There's a TV, books, art supplies, a row of computers.

He stares at those for a minute. Computers, those have potential, maybe. He might be able to at least find out how creative he really is at filling in extra details for his hallucinations.

He looks around the room. He's alone. There's a nurse in the office at the far end of the room, but she's not paying any attention to him. Maybe the universe, or his fucked-up brain, or whatever, _wants_ him to do this. Who is he to argue with that?

He sits down at the computer at the far end and jiggles the mouse, waiting for the screen to wake up. This place probably has pretty tight filters for accessing anything, but basic Google searches should work, with any luck. He can at least get the lay of the land.

And the lay is...exactly the same. Obama is President. The recession sucks balls. There's still war and poverty and horror and Republicans. His brain sucks at creativity in all possible ways.

Having exhausted the actually important stuff, the next step is obvious. He clicks in the search box again and puts in his own name.

Nothing.

"Fall Out Boy."

 _Simpsons_ references.

He stares at the screen. So. Just like the Tweet said, this is what things would be like for him without the band.

Fuck.

He starts typing without really thinking, one name after another. Everyone he knows, all of his friends. Search after search, screen after screen, skimming the results summaries in a frantic rush because he's too fucking freaked out to click the links. One after another, filling in the shape of this world without him by filling in the lives of the people he loves.

"Mr. Wentz." It's the nurse's voice from behind him, quiet but firm.

He shakes his head, hand shaking on the mouse. He's not done yet. There are more names.

"Mr. Wentz." Her hand settles on his shoulder and he jerks back, looking up and meeting her eyes.

Then he's lying on the floor in the hallway of his condo. He's pissed all over himself, he's so hungry he's nauseated, and instead of dealing with either of those things he curls up and cries.  
**  
It's not that he's so much of a narcissist that he didn't know that a world without Pete Wentz as public object would do just fine. Nothing is going to _stop_ , that's just obvious. The fact that his friends would have lives without him, that they would do perfectly well, that some of them would quite possibly even do _better_ , that doesn't even throw him too badly. Well, it stings, but he could fucking deal with it.

It was the process of putting in those names that did it. One by one, listing them out, realizing just how many people he _has_ , and from there realizing that in this other world he has none of them, they've all been taken away.

No, not taken away. He never had them at all. He's _alone_ , and has been, and from what he can tell, he will be.

That's fucking cruel as hell. He's always known that his brain kind of sucks, but this is above and beyond. An excess of bullshit in the form of a fucking kick to the metaphorical groin.

He drives to the nearest liquor store and stocks up, then spends the evening drinking steadily in an earnest effort to kill off the brain cells that apparently fucking hate him. Assholes.

His phone lies there on the table through the whole process, blinking serenely with a few missed calls and a bunch of missed texts. He bites his tongue hard whenever the idea of picking it up crosses his mind. No. He's not talking to anyone tonight. None of them. If it would be so easy for them all to disappear, if changing one thing wipes them all out, then he doesn't want or need them anyway. Fuck them.

Logic and rationality left the building somewhere around drink number three, escorted out the door by blind panic. He takes no responsibility for that.

The bottle is halfway to his mouth when the next flash hits. He goes from stinking drunk to stone sober in a heartbeat, which makes him fall over a little. Luckily he's sitting on the cot, so it doesn't hurt.

There's a notebook in front of him, the pages covered in cramped scrawl that he recognizes as his own, though it's actually neater in this world. He still has the pencil between his fingers.

He was writing a list before the flash, apparently. Stuff he's supposed to remember from his session with the doctor. He runs his finger down the margin of the page--no doodles, no scratched-out half-thoughts, this isn't what any paper he's been writing on should look like--and reads.

1\. I am not famous.  
2\. I do not have a band.  
3\. I do not have a record label, or a clothing line.  
4\. The friends I think I have are not real.  
5\. I am sick and if I take my medicine I'll get better.

The word _better_ trails off into a smear. Pete doesn't fix it.

He gets off the bed carefully and moves around the room. There's nowhere to go, but he isn't really trying to leave; he just can't sit there and look at that.

This isn't the hallucination. His life is the hallucination. No. Not his life. This is his life, this gray room and a notebook full of therapy sessions and being _alone_.

If he screams, someone will come running. It won't be anyone he wants to see.

 _Because the people I want to see aren't real. Or they're real and they don't know me. Or--or--_

He sinks down to the floor, wrapping his hands around the back of his head, holding on tight and forcing the scream to stay in his chest, so the only thing that escapes is a painful, silent breath of air.

Oh God. Oh God.

He puts his hands down to catch himself before he falls forward, bracing his palms flat on the floor. The cold of the tile jolts through him, and he shudders, leaning down to press his forehead to the floor, too. Maybe the cold will seep all the way through him, all the way to his brain. Maybe it'll knock him out and he'll wake up in yet another world, where he's an accountant or something and everything's boring but safe.

He takes shallow, shaking breaths and stares at the pattern of the tile. There's a crack, and his eyes follow the line automatically, tracking it off under the bed. There are arcs of dirt, just past where the mops can reach, and up under the mattress, tucked in between it and the frame, there's a piece of paper. He blinks at it, looking up and sideways from the floor. It's a whole sheet, torn out of a notebook and folded up into quarters. He pulls it free and spreads it out on the floor, lifting his head just enough to read it.

 _Dear Pete._ Still his own handwriting, but apparently he's all into the third person here. Okay.

 _Dear Pete. They say none of it's real. None of them are real. But that doesn't explain why it feels more real than anything here, why it makes more sense, why they know you better than anybody here does. Or maybe it does make sense, because if you (I) invented them, of course they know you (me) (us) better. But reality is subjective. Remember? Philosophy._

It's not exactly lyrics, but it sounds like himself. He recognizes the heartbeat behind the words.

 _For fuck's sake if they ever give you a chance to choose, choose the dreams. Choose that world. Choose **them**._

The last word is underlined four times. He knows what he meant. He knows exactly.

He's still staring at the note when he hears footsteps in the hall, and a nurse's voice calling lights out. He scrambles up into the bed, crushing the note in his fist and shoving his whole hand under the pillow, not wanting to let it go. The door opens and the nurse smiles in at him, and he tries to smile back, feeling the edge of the paper bite into his palm as he flashes out.

Going from sober to drunk that fast makes both fall over and throw up on himself. He strips and leaves his clothes on the couch, then drags himself down the hall to bed, pretty sure that the hangover is going to be some kind of epic history-books shit. It is.

Lying in bed waiting for death and/or the day's first flash does give him some time to think, though. Among other things, what occurs to him is that he was wrong before.

There may in fact be two people in his life that he _can_ explain this to. He just has to hope like hell that they're both home, and haven't taken off to Tahiti or something.  
**  
Mikey frowns slightly and looks down at his hands. Gabe turns his head slowly to the left and right, as if the vodka fairies are going to appear and fill Mikey's living room with Stoli.

"Don't say anything," Pete warns him before Gabe can even open his mouth. "You called me at two AM with a story about a giant cobra and said you wanted to start a band."

"You're always throwing that in my face." Gabe slouches down on the couch and looks at Mikey. "But okay, that explains why you thought I would be game for this shit. What about him?"

"Because I watch a lot of bad sci-fi," Mikey says calmly. He looks at Pete and raises an eyebrow. "Right?"

Pete nods, weak with relief. "What are you thinking?"

"Fortunately, this trope's in the good stuff, too. Back to the Future, definitely. At least two episodes of Star Trek. That one episode of Buffy. Um. Maybe Labyrinth."

"I don't see how Labyrinth connects," Gabe objects. "You just want an excuse to watch it."

Mikey rolls his eyes. "The rhyme, dude, how she gets back, that could be _relevant_. Get your laptop. We're going to need TVTropes. And Wiki. And IMDB."

"So you don't think I'm crazy?" Pete asks hopefully as they start setting up computers.

"Of course you're crazy," Mikey says, settling cross-legged on the floor. "So are we. And there's got to be a reason these narratives come up over and over again, right?"

Pete has no idea, but he's willing to go along. Definitely more than willing.

They spend about two hours data-gathering on the Internet, writing what they find and what Pete's put together on individual sheets of paper, then taping those to the wall. "I always wanted to have a conspiracy wall," Gabe says with satisfaction, stepping back to study it. "Awesome." He leans in to read one sheet, tilting his head to the side. "Hey, Pete, dude, you're holding out on us."

"What?"

"You Googled around to see what's going on, but you didn't check what all of us were up to?"

Pete frowns down at the paper in front of him. "I did."

"So fucking spill."

Pete shrugs. "Brendon won American Idol."

Gabe looks at him with surprise. "No shit?"

"Yeah. His first album didn't get a good response, but the second one has good advance buzz."

"You know that I wasn't really asking about Brendon, right? It's not that I don't care, but..."

"You don't care." Pete rolls his eyes. "You own a club. The phrase 'king of the scene' occasionally came up with your name."

Gabe frowns. "That's...well, it doesn't suck, but it's not awesome, dude. What about my guys?"

Pete stares down at the paper again. He doesn't want to run through the whole list. It's still too freaky and it makes the inside of his head hurt. "They're fine. Trust me. When I think about people I can more or less trust to take care of themselves, your band is right up there near the top."

"That's what you think. They're helpless without me." Gabe shakes his head. "We definitely need to shut that universe down. What about Mikey? What's he doing?"

"As far as I can tell, My Chem is exactly the same."

"That's weird."

"Not really." Pete shrugs irritably, not wanting to deal with this anymore. Fucking Gabe.

Mikey doesn't look up from his computer. "What about your band?"

"What?"

Mikey sighs and stops typing, giving Pete a cool look over the edge of his screen. "You can't tell me you didn't look for them first."

"Oh." He rubs his thumb over the paper and smears the ink. "Andy's got some kind of anarchist death-metal thing going."

"Hands up everybody who's surprised," Gabe says with a snort.

"I couldn't find Joe." Pete frowns at the paper again. That bugs him kind of a lot, actually. Seeing people happy and successful was a relief even as it stung. Finding nothing conclusive on Joe and a few of the others, nothing to assure him it wasn't just somebody else with the same name, that was...bothersome.

"And Patrick?" Mikey prompts, closing his laptop and reaching for the DVD binder on the table.

Pete rips the paper, dragging a ragged line from the edge to the center. "He's the drummer for Bill Beckett's band."

Gabe looks up. "Bill's still got a band? I'm totally not surprised. Good for him."

"Yeah." Pete shrugs. He doesn't want to talk about this, doesn't want to end up having to explain the weird twist of anger and jealousy in his guts. It doesn't make any sense and it's stupid and he can't get rid of it.

"Well, where's Butcher?" Gabe presses, because he's Gabe and he doesn't fucking know when to quit.

"Teaching art at a community college." Gabe doesn't look like he approves of that answer at all. "Look, I don't know, okay? I think some of it's just random fucking chance. I don't know how it works, which is why I don't know how to fix it."

"That's what we're going to figure out." Mikey holds up a disc. "Get ready to take some notes, kids. Where we're going, we don't need roads."  
**  
It somehow takes them over five hours to watch Back to the Future, mostly because they keep pausing it to argue. And once to order food. And once because Pete has a flash and wakes up face-down in said food.

"I was there for at least half an hour," he says, wiping rice off his face. "You could've, you know, moved me off my plate."

"We weren't sure if we should touch you." Mikey looks at him intently. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine. I'm sticky. Are there napkins?"

Gabe hands him one. "What did you see?"

"Nothing interesting. I was watching TV in the rec room." He had wanted to go back to the computers and do some more searching, but there were a lot of people there this time.

"Fucking weird." Gabe gets up and heads for the kitchen. Pete thinks about asking him for a beer or maybe a knife of some kind, but Mikey is still staring at him intently and that means there's a question coming.

"Spit it out, Mikeyway."

"Why did you call us?"

Pete frowns. "I thought we already established that. Crazy guy and geek."

"This seems like the kind of situation where a guy calls his best friend."

Pete shakes his head. "I don't want to bother Patrick with this shit."

"Reasoning, please?"

God, Mikey is a fucking pain in the neck. "He deserves a break from me and my bullshit. That's what the whole hiatus thing is about, you know?"

Mikey stares at him for a minute. "You're kind of dumb sometimes."

"Yeah, well, let's get me back in one universe and then we can work on making me smarter, okay?"

"Fine." Mikey reaches for the remote. "But step one is going to be making you a chart about what being best friends means."  
**  
The plan, if it can be called that, is mostly Gabe's idea.

"It's all Back to the Future," he declares at somewhere around hour fifty-one of the whole process, when Pete is just about ready to break down screaming and the conspiracy wall has sprouted pictures of Angelina Jolie for no good reason. "Mikey was right from the beginning."

"Great." Pete nods slowly. "What?"

"Marty fixes his timeline by getting his parents back together. The kiss." Gabe points at the screencap of that moment off to the left side of the wall. "That's the key."

"I still don't fucking get it."

"You have to get your band back together," Mikey supplies.

Pete looks at the screencap again. "I have to make them kiss?"

Mikey sighs. "No."

"I have to make them form a band with me? That took years the _first_ time, and they didn't already have shit going on like they do now."

"Pete!" Gabe snaps. "Stop being so literal."

"Then explain it to me, douchebag."

"Get them in the same place," Mikey says. "Then...go with your gut."

"My gut."

"You'll _know_." Gabe waves his hands. "Magic. Destiny."

"I don't see what destiny has to do with it."

"That's because you're dumb," Mikey says, not unkindly. "Trust us."

"Patrick's going to be the key, you know," Gabe says thoughtfully, and Mikey elbows him in the ribs.

"What?" Pete frowns at them. Gabe opens his mouth, but Mikey elbows him again and shakes his head.

"Nothing."

God, these two are weird. "Well, whatever, how am I supposed to do any of this when I can't find Joe and I'm _locked up_ , in case you forgot?"

Gabe gives him a pitying look. "Dude. You seem to have forgotten that you're Pete Wentz."

Pete slumps down to the floor in defeat. "You say that like it means something."

"It does." Mikey kicks him until he looks up. "You're sneaky. You're charming. You're kind of manipulative. You pursue stuff with your whole will and don't fucking give up. Especially when it comes to your friends."

"Plus you're kind of a freaky stalker," Gabe adds. "Not finding Joe on a basic Google doesn't mean shit to the Pete Wentz I know."

Pete stares at them for a minute. "I don't know if I want to kiss you both or punch you both in the face."

"How about neither?" Mikey goes over to study the conspiracy wall again. "The only hitch I see is that I don't know what to do about the way you flash back and forth. You need to stay there for a while for this to work."

"I actually have an idea about that." Pete fumbles through the mess of papers around him on the floor. "I made a list of stuff I remember about the flashing back."

"When did you do that?" Gabe asks, leaning down to see.

"While you two were arguing about who you wanted to bone more, Lea Thompson or Sarah Michelle Gellar."

"Sarah Michelle Gellar is still the correct answer, Mikey is a Communist," Gabe mutters.

"God, shut up, seriously, I'll kill you." Pete stares at his notes. "I think it's always eye contact that knocks me back."

"Sweet!" Gabe claps his hands. "First thing you do after you bust out, steal a pair of sunglasses. Problem solved."

Pete blinks and then laughs helplessly. "Fuck. It can't possibly be this simple."

"No," Mikey says, "it can't, but trust in the narrative."

Pete nods and crumples the list in his hand. "So...okay. Next time I go, I'll try to do this." He looks at Mikey and tries for a smile. "You'll, you know, take care of me while I'm gone?"

"I'll only draw on you with washable markets," Gabe says. "Promise."

Mikey meets Pete's gaze steadily. "Yeah," he says. "We will. Find your band."  
**  
All-night coffee shops are a fucking godsend when you're an insomniac under any circumstances, but when you're an insomniac visiting an alternate universe and without anywhere to sleep, they're extra-handy. Pete huddles up in a booth in the back corner with a notebook and a stack of newspapers he's praying like hell the local clubs still use to advertise.

And coffee, of course. It's been a really long day.

It turns out that all those years of watching bad movies have some benefits in very specific situations. They come in handy for figuring out how to quit jumping in and out of alternate universes, and they provide a useful skill set for breaking out of a residential facility.

That is to say, Pete lifted a key card out of a nurse's back pocket to make his escape, and it actually worked. Like a damn spy movie. It was awesome.

Then he took a cab to his parents' house, broke in long enough to collect some clothes and the cash that was still hidden in his dresser, and came down into the city. He bought a prepaid cell phone and, remembering Gabe's advice, a pair of sunglasses, and here he is, setting up command central. Command central needs Internet access, but that'll have to wait until the net cafe across the street opens in...six hours. He's going to need a _lot_ of coffee.

He flips through the papers, skimming the ads for places he recognizes and then digging through the tiny fine print of their upcoming shows for the names he remembers from his Google binge. Come on, come on, come _on_ , the scene might be dying but it can't be completely dead, not when he _needs_ it.

He resolutely pushes back any hint of the thought that maybe Andy and Patrick's bands are out on the road somewhere. Mikey said to trust the narrative, and he's going to do that, because the alternative is having a completely panicked meltdown in the middle of this coffee shop, and that's really not his idea of a good time.

And he still has no idea what to do about finding Joe. He stares down at his notebook, which was supposed to be for making plans but instead is turning into a place to keep an endless series of crooked, careless doodles.

It's hard to think back to how it all started, to how he found them all the first time. It makes his chest hurt. He draws sharp, jagged lines, thinking back to those fucking _kids_ that they all were, back then, Joe and Patrick more literally than him and Andy but still, just dumb--

Kids.

 _Oh._

He scrambles out of his seat, half-falling on his way to the counter, and asks the bored girl on the overnight shift if she happens to have a phone book.  
**  
He remembers this place well; they didn't spend quite as much time in guitar shops as they did sitting around getting drunk, but it was close, and this was one of their favorites. It makes sense that Joe would be working here; the minute poor confused Mrs. Trohman said the name, Pete knew he should've fucking thought of it himself instead of bothering people at eight in the morning.

Mrs. Trohman _remembered_ him, once he said his name, which was kind of weird. Nice, though, and it gives him a little bit of hope. Maybe other people will remember, maybe it'll feel a little less like he doesn't really exist.

Joe's standing behind the counter in the back, looking bored out of his mind. He's flipping through a magazine and his hair is huge and Pete has the strongest impulse to sprint the length of the store, vault the counter, and hug him.

Instead he shoves his hands in his pockets, walks back calmly, and says "Hey, dude. Long time, no see."

Joe looks up from the magazine and stares at him for a long moment. Pete's stomach sinks as Joe's brow furrows a little--fuck, _fuck_ , he got ahead of himself and he really _doesn't_ exist, this is awful--but then Joe blinks a few times and breaks into a grin.

"Holy shit. Took me a minute with the sunglasses. Pete. I thought you dropped off the fucking planet."

Pete shrugs, trying to grin through the dizzy wave of relief that goes through him. "I caught the last shuttle back. How the hell are you?"

"Good. I'm good. You know." Joe gestures around himself vaguely. "Living...well, not exactly the dream, but I can't complain. Where have you been? I haven't seen you since...well, fuck, since you got out of the hospital, I guess."

Pete blinks a few times. Got out of the hospital, that's...interesting, but he has to roll with it. "Yeah, I guess that was the last time, huh? Well, I mean, with me, it's more like since I got out of the hospital _which time_ , right?"

Joe laughs. "The time you tried to take out the windshield of my car with your head."

"Right. Right." Pete bites down on his tongue hard before he lets himself continue. "Man, where were we even going, you remember?"

Joe shrugs and leans over the counter to slide the magazine back into its rack. "I dunno. I think that was when we were looking for a drummer. We were going to meet up with some kid, see if he wanted in."

Pete forces himself to keep breathing, keep breathing, but it's harder to order his heart to beat. "Oh. Yeah, I think I remember that."

"I hit a curb, you did a fucking header." Joe laughs again, shaking his head. "Not the greatest night."

"I guess not."

"Seriously, though, where the hell have you been? Saw you around for a while after that, but then you just kind of..."

Pete shrugs, drumming his fingers on the edge of the counter. "Um, you know. Here and there. I needed a change of scenery."

Joe nods slowly. "I get that."

"But I'm back now. I'm...I'm definitely back." He shoves the glasses higher on his nose. Joe's looking at them with curiosity, but if he's not going to ask, Pete isn't going to risk coming up with a bullshit lie until he has to. "We should hang."

"Oh, absolutely, dude. Absolutely."

Holy fuck, it turns out one thing might be _easy_. He seriously could kiss Joe Trohman. "Hey, you know who else I was going to look up? You remember Andy Hurley?"

"Hurley? Of course." Joe nods at a poster on the wall. "He's playing across the street next week. You should come. Gonna be awesome."

Pete holds on to the counter tighter, because if he doesn't, he's going to fall down. "Awesome," he manages to say, nodding. "Sweet. Give me your number, dude. I'll call you and we'll figure something out."  
**  
That was almost easy; he has contact with Joe, and he's one step away from Andy. Now he just has to fucking find Patrick.

He heads back to command central, drinks more coffee--it's still holding him up, but he's got to find a place to crash soon; even he has his limits--and then hits the Internet cafe, paying too much money for half an hour and fighting the reflexive attempt to log in to e-mail and Twitter accounts that don't even exist here.

MySpace, though. MySpace will never fail him.

This universe's The Academy Is... is regional, but they're hungry, and they apparently have an unsettling preference for concept albums. What the hell, Bill Beckett.

He scrolls past all of that to the show dates, squinting at the list and biting at his thumbnail. He wants to put his other hand over the banner at the top of the page, because having Patrick staring at him from between Bill and Sisky is wrong in the extreme. This isn't the way it's supposed to be. He goes back and forth between being unsettled and upset by it, and just getting fucking mad.

He shouldn't have to jump through fucking hoops to get to Patrick. He just wants to be able to pick up the damn phone and have everything fit into place, the other half of his brain right there and making things make sense.

They have a show that weekend. Saturday night. He doesn't recognize the venue name, so he clicks and waits for that page to load, rubbing at his eyes and trying not to sink into the dull haze of exhaustion and worry behind his eyes. He's been in this universe for more than 24 hours now, and apparently he's going to have to stay for at least a week. Who knows what will happen to this version of him if he goes back? When he flashes back to here again, he could be in jail, or find out he got hit by a car, or...anything. Anything could happen.

He really hopes Gabe and Mikey are taking care of his body. Not just in the sense that he doesn't want to come back and find new tattoos or a shaved head, but getting food into it, and water, and, like, toilet functions.

It's okay if they don't bathe him, though. That might be weird.

He shakes his head hard and tries to snap back to reality, opening his eyes and looking over the top of the sunglasses at the screen. He still doesn't recognize the name of the venue, but the address makes sense. He can find that easily.

In fact, he doesn't have anything else to do, so he might as well walk down there right now. Scope things out.  
**  
It takes longer than he expects, because he's tired and he keeps getting distracted, keeps thinking he hears someone calling his name. He walks half a mile farther than he meant to, then has to turn around and come back, and then he's all disoriented and misses a turn _again_ , and...well, one thing or another, he doesn't find the venue until the sun's already sliding down to hide out under the buildings, leaving him in shadows that make the sunglasses look stupid.

He leans against the wall next to the stage entrance, sliding the glasses down so he can rub his eyes and wondering why he even bothered to _do_ this. The show's two days away. Nobody's going to be here. He's standing in an alley like a giant creep, for no fucking reason.

Even if someone does show up, even if he _does_ find Patrick, what the fuck is he supposed to do? He lucked out with Joe, he has no reason to hope for that kind of luck again. So maybe Joe still knows Andy and can give him an in there, but it keeps coming back to Patrick in his head, and what the fuck is he supposed to say?

 _You don't remember me--we didn't quite manage to meet--but in another universe you're my best friend, you're my voice, and we're something special, we're something amazing--_

"Hey, dude, you need something?"

Pete jumps about two feet, sunglasses nearly sliding off his face.

Patrick's standing there with a set of drumsticks in his hands, twirling one of them restlessly between his fingers, looking at Pete with wary curiosity.

"Um," Pete says, shoving the glasses back up into place. Fuck. Fuck. He really, really doesn't know what to say. "Um, no, it's...I'm cool. It's cool. I'm just...waiting."

"For what?"

 _For you, except I can't say that because you would be within your rights to Mace me._ "The...the show?"

Patrick stares at him like he's the world's biggest idiot. That's almost comforting in its familiarity. "The show is Saturday."

"Oh. Right. Yeah. I just...I know some of the guys. In the band."

He'd thought Patrick had developed that skeptical look in self-defense at dealing with him, but apparently no, it was hardwired. "Yeah? I'm in the band, and I don't know you."

"I mean I used to know them. Back...years ago." He shrugs, tense and aching and desperate. "I've been gone for a while."

Patrick looks at him for another minute, clearly not buying it, but he doesn't tell him to fuck off and Pete figures that has to kind of count as a win.

"Well, none of them are here," Patrick says finally. "I'm just dropping some stuff off. But you should come back on Saturday, for the show. Give me your name, I'll put it on the list or whatever and you can come backstage and say hi."

Shit. He wasn't totally lying, he had crossed paths with Carden and Bill a few times back in the very early days, but no way in hell are they going to _remember_ him. Shit.

"Me and a buddy," he says stupidly, and Patrick frowns, fucking suspicious as always. That must be hardwired, too. "I'm Pete Wentz, and he's Joe Trohman."

His name doesn't even get a flicker of recognition, not even a bat of an eyelash. That feels like a punch to the chest, which turns into a _kick_ to the chest when Joe's name gets a nod. "Oh, yeah, JoeTroh from the shop. Awesome. Yeah, okay, I'll put your names down."

"Great." Pete nods a few times, aware that he's staring at Patrick too hard and that even with the glasses it's got to be kind of creepy. "That's...that's great. Thanks."

Patrick shrugs and spins his sticks again, stepping past Pete and reaching for the door. "Yeah. See you."

The door swings shut behind him and Pete looks at it for a while, twisting his hands into the ends of his sleeves. Apparently on some level he'd been hoping for a blinding flash of recognition and the restoration of the universe as soon as he saw Patrick's face. Getting back... _nothing_ , indifference, that fucking hurts.

Patrick not knowing him fucking hurts.

What hurts worse, and scares the shit out of him, is that he doesn't actually know how to fix it. The first time around was all chance and accident. Magic. How the fuck is he supposed to make lightning strike on purpose?  
**  
Who knows what the answer is for sane people, but like Gabe said, he's Pete Wentz. He goes with stalking.

He goes to their show, dragging Joe along with a bribe of food, and then he latches on, digging his fingers in and holding on tight. He invites himself along to everything TAI does and everywhere they go. Hanging out at their rehearsal space. Sleeping on Bill's floor. Volunteering for all of the coffee and doughnut runs--yeah, he knows these guys, he knows he can buy their affection with sugar and caffeine.

It works just fine on the rest of them. They're fucking easy. He has declarations of Sisky's undying love by day three. But Patrick has to be difficult, of course.

"Dude," Pete hears him hiss as he drags Bill off into a corner. "What the fuck? Why is he here _again_? Isn't this creeping anybody else out? Am I the lone voice of sanity?"

"You're the lone voice of cranky," Bill says, rolling his eyes. "What's the problem? He's cool. He wants to hang out. He's not hurting anything. Calm the fuck down."

Well, _that's_ not going to work, in any universe. Pete's kind of surprised Bill doesn't know that by now.

"We don't even know him," Patrick says, and Pete has to punch himself in the thigh. He isn't getting used to this at all, and he can't figure out why.

"He could be crazy. He could be a serial killer."

"He's not a serial killer," Bill says patiently.

"He's always wearing those sunglasses! He's trying to hide his face so we can't ID him to the cops."

Pete blinks a little; that's a little fucking paranoid for Patrick. A little bit much.

Bill is beginning to sound bored with this whole line of discussion. "I asked him about the glasses. He has eye problems that he can't get afford to get fixed because of the abysmal state of health care in this country."

"And you buy that? I'm going right back to the fact that he's probably crazy."

" _Patrick_. He is not...well, okay. He might be crazy, but in a harmless way. He's like a groupie. Don't worry about it."

A _groupie_? He's punching Beckett in the face as soon as he gets back to his own world. But here, he has to play along. He puts on his best smile and wanders over to the corner where they're standing. "Hey, dudes. Who's up for doughnuts?"

Bill shoots him a confused look and then a smile, running his hand through his hair. "Yes. Doughnuts would be awesome. Thanks, Pete."

Patrick shoots him a look of open hostility. Pete forces his smile wider, showing more teeth. "Care to come with me, Patrick?"

"No," Patrick says. Bill kicks him in the shin and Pete's fists clench at his sides before he catches himself. Physical abuse of Patrick is unacceptable, but so is getting himself thrown out and losing the only connection he's managed to make in this direction, however tenuous it is.

"Go with him and stop being such a baby," Bill hisses. Pete stares up at the ceiling and pretends not to notice the subsequent bickering, just plays it cool when Patrick shoves past him toward the door and mutters "Come on, then, we don't have all day."

The doughnut place is two blocks away, and Patrick seems pretty determined to stomp the whole way there in grumpy silence. Pete keeps his hands in his pockets and wanders along a pace or two behind him, eyes on the back of Patrick's neck.

"Stop looking at me," Patrick says, not looking back.

"What makes you think I'm looking at you?"

"You look at me all the damn time. It's bizarre. I don't even know you."

Pete clenches his fists again and then forces them to relax. "I don't know, man, maybe we knew each other in a past life, or something."

Patrick stops and looks at him, one eyebrow raised in skepticism. "Seriously?"

Pete shrugs. "Never know."

"I kind of doubt it."

He shrugs again. "But you can't say for sure."

Patrick stares at him for a minute and then starts walking again, shaking his head slowly. "God, you're weird."

"You have no idea," Pete mutters, but he jogs a few steps until he's walking next to Patrick. "Hey, dude." Patrick looks sideways at him, but doesn't say anything. Pete keeps going anyway. "You want to come to a show with me and Joe tomorrow night?"

"Didn't we just establish that I don't even like you?"

"Don't have to like _me_ to like _music_."

"That's deep." Patrick hums a few vague notes and dodges a pack of teenagers taking up half the sidewalk. "What's the show?"

"Scream Theory. They're, like, hardcore. I know the drummer. Joe and I both do, we're on the list, it's gonna be sweet. You should come."

Patrick thinks for a minute, swerving around a mailbox in the opposite direction that Pete goes. "I don't think so, dude."

"Oh, c'mon."

"I'm sure it's great, but I've got plans."

"What kind of plans?"

"The none of your business kind, dude I don't even know." Patrick holds the door to the doughnut shop open and Pete steps inside, grinding his teeth in frustration. Seriously, why did he ever put up with this stubborn, difficult, bitchy little d-bag in the first place?

"You're really really completely sure you don't want to go."

"Totally and one hundred percent."

"Fine." Pete exhales sharply and steps up to the counter, pointing at doughnuts at random. Fine. Apparently now things are going to be more complicated, but that's _fine_ , he has trust in the fucking narrative and he is going to get his fucking band together if he has to knock them all unconscious to do it.  
**  
Andy's show is exactly as sick as expected, and Pete wishes he was out on the floor instead of side-stage, because he could use some screaming and moshing and getting fucked up right now. Instead he drinks his beer and leans on the wall next to Joe, looking over the rims of his glasses and trying not to be twitchy. It's all going to be fine. It's going to be great. He will figure something out.

He's been in this universe for a week now. He has no idea if his body is, like, starving to death or dehydrating into a husk or something. And since their trip to the doughnut shop, Patrick has ignored him completely, stone-cold. He's not making any goddamn _progress_.

And of course he keeps thinking about everything in terms of Back to the Future, and how in the movie Marty has that family picture and the longer he's in the past, the more his siblings fade out of it. What if things are...fading out the longer _he's_ gone? What if what he's trying to get back to is changing even as he stands here?

"Hey, dude, c'mon," Joe says, tugging at his sleeve, and Pete goes with him, startled to realize that apparently the show is over and he entirely missed the encore. Good to know that zoning out is consistent across any and all universes.

Other things that are consistent: Andy Hurley giving full-body-tackle, fucking phenomenal hugs. "Pete _Wentz_! It has been fucking _years_! Holy shit, dude, where have you _been_?"

It takes a minute for Pete to be able to answer. First he just needs to hug back, hang on tight, and remind himself that he cannot cry for no reason in front of this version of his bandmates. They would be confused and uncomfortable.

"It's good to see you, Hurley," he manages finally, resting his forehead against Andy's shoulder. "So fucking good to see you."

"Fuck, we have to catch up on...like, forever. Come on. Let me get cleaned up and put shit away and we'll go out."

Pete blinks at him a few times. "Out?" If this is a universe where Andy eats and drinks like a normal person, possibly he will do like thirty seconds of rethinking about getting the fuck out of here.

"Fabulous vegan diner just two blocks away," Andy says earnestly, and Pete has to hug him again.

He gets his spiel of lies out of the way as fast as possible once they're at the diner, then picks at his food and listens to Andy and Joe talk, trying to convince himself that two-thirds in one place is awesome, and that empty spot at the table that Joe and Andy don't even know is there isn't really _that_ big a deal.

It really, really is, though.

"Yeah, I keep up with it," Joe is saying when Pete zones back in. "I teach lessons and shit, and I practice, just learning stuff by ear. Pretty much everybody around here knows that if they need somebody to sit in for some reason, I'm game. Give me a day or whatever to really listen and get it in my head, a couple of swings through rehearsal, I'm in. The crazier the better, you know?"

Andy laughs. "Fuck, yeah. Dude, we could've used you last month, we were in Detroit and Steve forgot to double-check what he ordered for dinner."

Joe winces. "Tomatoes?"

"Full-on anaphylactic...whatever. He was out, we had do the whole show with just one guitar." He shakes his head mournfully. "Could've used you."

Joe laughs and promises to hop a plane any time for Scream Theory, but Pete isn't listening anymore. He's staring down at his plate and wondering if the idea that just came into his head is fucking _genius_ or straight-up sociopathic. Or if he even cares.  
**  
TAI's next show is on Thursday night. Pete bides his time until Wednesday by sticking to the routine that's kind of starting to bore him out of his mind: hang out at the command-central coffee shop all morning, throw in a few hours at the Internet cafe leaving cryptic comments on blogs, writing endless lists of things he's going to do once he's back in his own universe, and wrapping it all up to make it to TAI's practice space about an hour after they do for the afternoon.

Then he sits in the corner and doodles in his notebook some more while they alternate between practicing and screaming at each other. Fucking contentious bunch of children.

He usually gives them about ninety minutes of that before he stands up and stretches, tossing his pen down and announcing in as bright and cheerful a voice as he can manage "Wow, I could use some coffee. Anybody want to pitch in and I'll do a Starbucks run?" They all do. Every time. He isn't sure if he's training them or the other way around, honestly.

Every other day, he's tried to talk Patrick into going with him, but today he just pockets the money and heads out the door. He has a plan that kind of relies on not having any witnesses, because after a few days to think about it he's been forced to acknowledge that it really does fall on the sociopathic side of the scale.

He's decided to think of it as acceptable collateral damage. This universe isn't even really _real_. Unless it's the real one and the one he comes from isn't real. But he's already decided that's the one he wants to live in, so reality doesn't matter so much as...fuck, it gives him a headache to think about it. He tried to draw a chart to figure it out one morning at the coffee shop, but it didn't help.

He wants to go home. He wants his life back, and his friends, and Patrick, and in order to get Patrick, he has to...majorly fuck up alternate Mike Carden.

It's an acceptable risk.

He gets to the Starbucks and orders the assortment of elaborately flavored beverages the band requires, tapping his fingers restlessly against the bottle in his pocket while he waits for the barista to finish putting it together. "Can you write names on them?" he asks, leaning across the counter and pointing at them one by one. "Bill...Pete...Michael...Adam...Patrick...Mike. Perfect. Thank you so much."

He takes the cardboard carrier over to a table by the door, angling his body between the cups and the barista's line of sight. Not that she has any reason to notice or care what he's doing, but he feels like a criminal and it seems like he should act like one, too. Okay, maybe not a criminal, but definitely a world-class douchebag.

He dumps about three doses of syrup of ipecac into Mike's coffee and stirs thoroughly. He had her put a double shot of flavor in that one, hopefully it'll cover up the taste.

"I'm sorry, dude," he mutters, shoving the bottle back into his pocket and balancing the tray as he bumps the door open with his hip. "For the puking your lungs out you are about to experience, I do sincerely apologize, but I need Joe on that guitar."  
**  
It's actually even more dramatic than he expected. There's about half an hour where he gets concerned that Carden might actually puke himself inside-out.

"What did you eat last night, man?" he asks with exaggerated concern, leaning in the bathroom door to watch the horror show with the rest of the band.

"Whatever it was, you totally should not go back to that place again."

"Leftovers," Carden moans, banging his head against the edge of the toilet. "What the _fuck_. I felt fine all day."

"Sometimes it sneaks up on you," Pete says, widening his eyes. "Definitely throw all of the leftovers away when you get home."

"I'm going to _die_ when I get home."

"We have a show tomorrow night," Bill mutters from behind Pete's shoulder, his nose wrinkling in disgust as another round of heaving kicks off. "What if he's not done puking by then? He has to be done puking by then. Nobody can keep _that_ up for a whole day."

Fuck. Pete hadn't counted on Bill-logic. "He's going to be dehydrated as shit, dude. He can't play."

"He has to play."

"Well, we still have the other guitar player. Do we really need two?" Patrick says, earning a choked "fuck you, dude, seriously," from in the bathroom, and Pete almost falls over his feet turning around to face Bill and Patrick and try to head that line of argument off at the pass.

"I'll call Trohman. He can sit in."

Bill looks at him skeptically. "The show is _tomorrow_."

"He's good at this shit, man. I swear. Give him a copy of the songs tonight, a couple of hours of rehearsal tomorrow, he won't be as good as Mike but he'll be passable. He'll get you through the show."

Patrick looks even more skeptical than Bill. Pete loves his cranky little face but not right _now_. "I don't know. This sounds crazy and weird."

"Do you have a ton of other options? Because I wasn't hearing you volunteer them."

"Why are you even _here_ ," Patrick starts again, and Bill waves his hands in the air, trying to assert some semblance of control.

"Pete, call Joe, please, see if he's busy. If he's free, we'll...give it a shot, I guess, I don't know what the fuck else to do except play it on one guitar or just kind of tie Mike to his mic stand for the show."

Pete nods, digging his phone out. "And that's a little kinky for a weeknight."

The look Patrick gives him for that one is fucking _classic_ , vintage Stump, and he would laugh himself hoarse if he wasn't already dialing Joe.

Joe doesn't pick up, so Pete leaves a message with an outline of the situation and no less than four repeats of how urgent it is that Joe _call him back_ , fucking ASAP, fucking _now_. He's got this itch at the back of his neck, a weird feeling, nothing concrete but just a sense that this is it, this is his big chance to set things right and go home. He's been here for two weeks now, and the more he thinks about that the more it freaks him out. They never sat down and figured out if there was a time limit for how long he can stay here before something goes...wrong, and he can't go back. It never occured to him that they might need to.

He really doesn't want to find out.

He paces back and forth across the back of the practice space while the others drag Carden downstairs and shove him into a taxi. He needs this. He needs a solid pass from the universe and he'll get the damn thing in the end zone. Or...something. Football metaphors blow.

His phone rings and he almost drops it getting it open, closing his eyes tightly. "Hello?"

"Dude, you got me a gig?" Joe sounds like he's about ten seconds from laughing. "Seriously?"

"Yeah. They're not going to pay you, but it'll be cool. Their rhythm guitarist...got sick." He is very aware that he stumbles over that and sounds guilty as hell. He's pretty sure Joe won't notice.

"What's their style?"

"Not your usual thing, but I swear, it'll be cool. They're fun. Bill Beckett's group. You know them."

"Oh, sure. Yeah. Yeah, I think I can swing that. You said tomorrow night?"

Pete closes his eyes tight. "That's the gig, yeah. Come by tonight and listen."

"Give me the address. I'm working till seven, but then I'm in."

He doesn't let himself breathe easily until he hangs up and punches in a text to Andy. _come see joe look like a doofus 2morrow nite_.

There's a short pause before the response. _have 2 sell it better than that_.

Fucker. _ill buy u dinner. & u should see their drummer. hes awesome_.

Another pause, longer, and this is so close he's fucking vibrating with it, he's going to fucking explode.

 _yeah ok send me the details i could use a free dinner ha ha_

He is going to buy his universe's Mike Carden a bottle of the finest Scotch whiskey in the land when he gets home in apology, even though he is officially no longer sorry.  
**  
He stands stage left with Andy, and now he feels like _he_ might be the one who needs to go throw up.

The set's going fine; Joe isn't playing with anything resembling the energy Pete associates with him. No jumps, no spins, no running around. Just standing in place and working his way through the songs, nodding his head and swaying a little. Which makes sense; he's doing half-improv. Still, it feels weird. Wrong.

He tries not to look back at Patrick behind the drum kit. Andy's saying nice stuff about him, standing there next to Pete and kicking him in the ankle occasionally as he realizes that Pete isn't listening to a word he says, but Pete cannot possibly concentrate on anything except the sinking realization that he has no idea what to do now.

 _Go with your gut_ , he remembers Mikey saying. That was the least helpful advice in the history of the universe. His gut doesn't know anything. His gut contains a knot of tension and three rolls of Lifesavers.

Bill struts across the stage, preens and taunts the crowd, and they scream. Pete blinks hard, the screams washing over him like a wave, feeling like home but not-home because they're not for him, and he's in the wrong place, and everybody else is in the wrong place, too. Everything here is wrong.

He can't take this much longer.

"Thank you very much!" Bill yells. "We love you! Thank you so much," and then they're starting offstage, the instruments are going onto their racks, they're slapping shoulders and laughing and talking, they're moving back down the hall toward the back room. Pete grabs Andy's elbow and they fall into step behind them, swept along like there's an undertow.

 _Go with your gut_. His hand is tingling where it touches Andy's skin. He doesn't think he's imagining that, it feels like he's touching something charged with electricity, not quite enough to hurt, not even quite enough to crackle, but building. Getting there.

All right, then. That has to mean something.

He pushes into the dressing room behind the guys, putting on his widest grin and tugging Andy along. "Dudes!" he calls. "Awesome show. Fucking awesome. Trohman, you killed it, man, c'mere."

He hip-checks Andy into Joe, earning a startled laugh from the one and a "Dude, the hell?" from the other before Andy sweeps him into a hug, one-armed because Pete isn't letting go. As soon as Andy touches Joe, that tingling feeling _jumps_ , buzzing through him like there's a train coming and he's standing on the tracks. Closer. So fucking close.

Close to _what_ , he can't say for sure, but he has a hunch. Or maybe he has a hope. Either way.

"Patrick!" he yells. "Patrick Stump." Patrick looks at him, but doesn't move closer, and Pete reaches out, grabbing his wrist and yanking him in close. "Shake hands with Andy Hurley, drum god and master."

More laughter, more rolling of eyes, and he bites his tongue to keep from screaming at them to just fucking _do_ it, do what he fucking tells them, can't they feel this, don't they know it's important? This has to end or the top of his head is going to blow off and then there's going to be a real mess on their hands.

"Hi," Patrick says, reaching to shake Andy's hand. Pete still has Patrick's other wrist, and Andy's elbow, and Joe's leaning up against Andy's other side, just enough to close the circuit, just enough that they're all connected. Pete literally rises up on his toes at the way the energy jolts through him then. _Enough_. It has to be enough. 1.21 gigawatts and he's going to fucking _die_ if this doesn't fucking go somewhere, do something, _end_.

Realistically it has to happen in less than two seconds, because how long does a handshake last? It feels like longer, though. It feels like a fucking year, a year of being set on fire from the inside and having his skin peeled off and his eyes turn inside-out.

That's what makes him get it, of course. His eyes.

He shakes his head hard, flips it back and down, and the sunglasses slide off, obeying gravity and flying off somewhere he's never going to have to see them again. "Patrick," he says, urgently, desperately. "Patrick."

Patrick turns his head, and Pete meets his eyes.

The world goes up in a flash of white, just like before, but this time he could swear he hears music.  
**  
He wakes up still full to the eyelids on that massive spike of energy, scrambling to sit up before he even fully realizes he's lying down. Sitting up doesn't really work too well, the motion immediately breaking down into a massive wave of dizziness, and he gasps, closing his eyes and curling in on himself. Holy shit. Holy shit.

"Pete." It's a familiar voice, more than familiar, it's fucking _home_ , and he turns toward it blindly. "Jesus, Pete."

He doesn't have to open his eyes. "Patrick."

Then there are arms around him, hugging him tight--too tight, ow, too fucking tight, but he's not going to complain--holding him up, which is helpful since he's pretty sure without them he'd fall right back down to the bed. He feels awful. Dizzy and nauseated and weak as a kitten. And _dirty_. Jesus, he can smell himself.

"Patrick," he manages again, realizing that his voice sounds awful, too, hoarse and thin. "Patrick, what...where..."

"Could ask you the same fucking questions, you jackass." Patrick's voice is rough, too, buried against Pete's shoulder. "What the fuck do you think you were doing? Where the fuck have you been?"

"I don't..." He finally manages to look up, look around, and Gabe and Mikey are standing there, too, hanging back by the doorway. They both look like shit, dark circles under Mikey's eyes and a major bruise on one of Gabe's.

"Dude, what happened to your face?"

Gabe laughs and shakes his head. "I, uh, couldn't provide the answers a certain angry little singer required. Fuck you two and your codependency. If you're really back with us, Petey, I need a fucking drink."

"I think I'm back." He sounds stupid, he sounds crazy, but he could really use some reassurance here and he's pretty sure--half-sure--kind of sure that Patrick won't hold it against him. "I'm pretty sure. I mean...this is real, right?" He looks at Patrick, because right now he's having a hard time remembering any good reasons to look anywhere else. "You know who I am?"

"Of course I know who you are." Patrick's still hugging him, holding on tight, his face against Pete's shoulder. "How the hell could I ever forget?"

Pete pulls back enough to look at him, meeting his eyes. It lasts for more than a split-second. That's a good sign. Patrick looks exhausted, his face pale and his eyes bloodshot. But there's recognition in his eyes, and worry, and oh, God, Pete has never been happier to see anything in his entire life.

"You know me," he says, grinning even though it makes his lips crack and that _hurts_ , damn it. "You know who I am."

"Yeah, we established that." Patrick touches his hand to Pete's forehead, runs it over his hair, looks him up and down like he's checking for missing pieces. "I know you."

Mikey clears his throat. "We're just gonna...and you two keep doing what you're doing." He drags Gabe out of the room and closes the door behind them, which ordinarily might seem a little weird but Pete can't be anything but grateful for the privacy at the moment.

He grabs Patrick's hands, holding them as tightly as he can given that his own hands don't especially want to do what he says. "We're in a band together, right?"

"I really, really hope so, otherwise I've got a lot of questions about the last few years of my life."

A wave of fear goes through him and he shakes his head frantically. "Don't ask those questions. Please. Don't...ever ask those."

Patrick stares at him for a moment, then nods slightly. "Okay. Don't...don't panic, Pete. I'm right here."

Pete just nods, not sure he could manage to put into words how much he needs that to be true for more than just right now. For as close to forever as possible.

Patrick smiles, and Pete can see that it's forced, with more worry behind it. "You have got so much explaining to do."

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you."

"Is that why you didn't call me?"

Pete shrugs, looking down at the sheets, tracing his fingers over the pattern in the fabric that's suddenly way, way easier to look at than all that worry. "We're on hiatus."

Patrick closes his eyes and then hugs Pete again, even tighter, which means it's _really_ too tight. Pete still can't bring himself to protest.

"You're such an idiot. I can't leave you alone for ten minutes."

"I would be okay with that," Pete says, and he knows he should laugh when he says that, should play it off as a joke, but he just can't, not right now. He just got Patrick back, and the idea of not having him around even for as little as ten minutes...well, it's probably going to be a few days before he can roll with that.

"What are you doing here, anyway?" he says after a few minutes, shifting to rest his forehead against Patrick's shoulder. "How did you find out? Did Mikey call you? No, I bet it was Gabe. I can't believe--"

"I called _them_." Patrick's hand moves up and down Pete's back, slow and soothing and warm. Pete hopes he never forgets to treasure that feeling again. "You didn't answer when I called you, you vanished off the Internet, nobody had seen you, I was _worried_. I called everybody you know. I fucking panicked."

"You did?"

"Oh my God." Patrick sighs. "I want to punch you, but I would have to stop hugging you."

"Don't do that." Pete swallows and closes his eyes again. "Look, dude. I know I have a lot of explaining to do, and I will, I swear, but...could we maybe just chill for a while? You and me? Just sit here and...neither of us _goes_ anywhere."

Patrick nods and holds him tighter. "Yeah. We can do that."

"Among other things I've been thinking, and not to be creepy or anything, but...my life would be, like, total shit without you." He pulls back again, suddenly needing to see Patrick's face as he says this, to look him in the eye and see if he understands everything in the words, the layers beneath the surface. "I don't like thinking about my life without you."

Patrick nods slowly, his eyes not leaving Pete's face, and Pete's chest hurts a little bit because he can tell that Patrick _does_ understand, all the way down through the layers to the basement. "I've been having a constant minor heart attack for the past two weeks, finding out what my life is like without you, and I've gotta say, I'm not a fan either."

Pete takes a shaky breath and smiles. "I'm glad to hear that it sucks for you, too."

"Sucks majorly." Patrick's hand curls around the back of Pete's neck and he rests their foreheads together, faces close, so they're breathing the same air. Close enough to kiss, and Pete's pretty sure he cannot be blamed by anybody in the world for going ahead and kissing.

Patrick kisses him back and there's no white light, no music, but Pete knows one hundred percent for sure that he's come home.


End file.
